Don't Wake Me Up
by threesummerdays
Summary: Somewhere between his nightmares and his reality is a real existence. He just needs to figure out where he stands. Terrible summary, but please give it a chance! Post 10.6 oneshot.


**A/N:** Oneshot inspired by Chris Brown's "Don't Wake Me Up." Enjoy! :)

* * *

He keeps his eyes scrunched shut. The light seeping through the white curtains blinds him even through his eyelids, so he tries to imagine darkness and reclaim the sleep that's slipping away from him. Last night was filled with sweat-inducing, bone-shaking nightmares, and his chest is heavy with the thought of what happened. Something tells him it was all real, that he's just in denial.

"_We were never meant to have those things."_

He shifts under the sheets and sighs under the silk. He can still feel the heat of her blood on his hand, and he wipes it on the sheet beside him, still refusing to open his eyes. He doesn't want to wake up and realize his shirt is still lying there over the chair, her blood sunk deep into it, deep as she ever was under his skin.

He remembers vividly telling Tom to kill the man who killed the woman he loved. Recalls with perfect clarity looking across the Grid, out of his office, and seeing her empty chair. Still sees the pity in the younger officers' eyes as he came into work without a day off.

He can still taste the coffee Erin brought him when she told him about the memorial service.

"_Malcolm has a poem," she says, and he blinks back another tear. He just nods._

No sugar. Not in that coffee cup.

He shifts again, shuffling his feet and feeling the duvet bunch up at the foot of the bed. He longs for something beside him, the weight of another being, to tell him it was all a dream, but as he stretches his toes across the mattress, he finds nothing.

"_Harry, don't even think about it," Dimitri says, and Harry glances back at him from the edge._

"_Think about what?"_

_Dimitri nods at the short stone barrier between his boss and the oblivion of a long fall._

"_I wouldn't," Harry admits. "It's too… too much."_

_Di nods again, then slowly reaches out to put a hand on the older spook's shoulder._

"_We all miss her," he whispers, and Harry chokes back a sob._

He never wants to fall again. The last fall he made was when he fell for her, and that's all he needs for the rest of his life. He drowned in her eyes, and the sound of her voice gave him more of a thrill than jumping could ever give.

Falling without her is just stumbling.

Somewhere next door, a woman is yelling for her husband, and Harry takes a deep breath. She's telling him the toast is popped up and his coffee's waiting on the table. He yells back something about how much he loves her, and Harry can feel his heart breaking. He imagines for a moment what she had imagined for them.

_She comes into the room and runs a hand down his naked back._

"_Are you going to come eat breakfast?" she whispers, and he smiles sleepily into the pillow._

"_I was busy dreaming about your lips," he whispers back, and she laughs lightly before leaning in to kiss him._

"_It's time to wake up," she says, her lips lingering by his._

"_Come back to bed," he says, tugging her hand, and she falls beside him._

It's too beautiful to leave behind, so he tries to fall back into the dream. But it doesn't make sense, he thinks, because the end of the last dream was how painful it was to tell her goodbye. And now, suddenly, this dream tells him that she's alive. It's wishful thinking, he muses, eyelashes batting against the pillow as he struggles to reclaim sleep.

_This love only exists in your dreams_.

A breeze passes through the window and rouses him from whatever sleepiness he thought he possessed. He sighs again and shakes his head, brushing his hair against the pillow. He wants to go back to the dream where she touches him and tells him she never died, it was just a nightmare, but another insistent gust of wind chills him, and he accepts his fate. Finally, he opens his eyes.

It takes a moment to adjust to the light, but he looks around the room anyway. The curtains waft gently against the window, and the sunlight continues to stream through them. He looks over at the chair and sees his shirt across it. When his eyes are accustomed to the light of the real world, he furrows his brow. He knows his shirt should have her blood – red and vibrant and perilous – sprayed across it, but it's clean and white and crisp.

He blinks long and slow and turns his eyes to the ceiling. Perhaps he forgot that he had changed shirts, finally thrown away the old one… But he knows it's impossible. He would have clung to that shirt until the day he died.

A floorboard creaks and he looks to the doorway. There shouldn't be anyone here with him, not when he's purposefully distanced himself from everyone…

He's about to get up and investigate when the door swings open softly and he stops breathing.

There she is, wrapped in his shirt, her hair tousled and her makeup from the night before smudged around her eyes. She's holding two mugs and smiling at him as his eyes rake over her.

She steps toward the bed and offers a mug. He sits up, noticing now that he's completely naked beneath the sheets and the blush rises up his neck. She laughs softly and continues holding out the drink. When he's readjusted against the pillows, he takes it from her and watches, awestruck, as she settles beside him, her milky thighs barely covered by his shirt.

She takes a deep drink and shuts her eyes, smiling happily as she swallows. He watches her throat, the way the muscles contract as the coffee slips down. Her mouth opens slightly and she lets out a satisfied sigh. He still hasn't taken a sip, and she turns her head and opens her eyes to stare at him.

He takes her silent hint and drinks. It's delicious and sweet and just the way he likes it. Sugar, this time.

When he senses she's still watching him, he nods. She smiles and turns back to stare at the window, but he keeps looking at her.

In the sunlight, she looks so real he could almost reach out and touch her. He traces the curl of her hair and the curve of her neck and the gentle rise and fall of her chest with his eyes. She's so real…

He can't stop his hand from reaching out and touching her leg. He feels her muscles clench at his touch, and he's amazed. His fingertips stray under the hem of his shirt, touching the soft skin beneath as she lets out a sigh. He continues staring at the flesh his fingers are caressing, wondering when she's going to disappear.

She turns away from him and he's disappointed when she slips out from beneath his touch, but when she turns back, he realizes it was only to put the mug on the bedside table.

Right beside a copy of Ovid.

He wonders how his dream can be so incredibly vivid.

She reaches across the bed and takes his mug away, placing it beside hers. He wants to protest, but then she slips closer, straddles him, and reaches out to take his face in her hands. He can see where she's failed to button his shirt completely, and the hint of her breasts beneath the material is temptation.

She leans in and kisses him, her soft lips encouraging his, and he reaches out to feel her. His hands settle on her sides, running his thumbs over the shirt, feeling her ribs through the thin cotton. Her legs are on either side of his hips, and he feels himself reacting to their closeness. She keeps kissing him, running her fingers through his short hair, and he moves his own hand to mirror her, twisting it in her curls.

He wants to pull away and ask her if this is real, is it a dream, what is his reality? But the feel of her stretched across him, the sweet swell of her breasts against his bare chest, the tender caresses of her lips on his…

She pulls back and he feels immediately bereft. He stares at her, and can't help but feel a surge of pride at the way her pupils have dilated and the way her chest is heaving a little more. He wants more – so desperately he can feel his heart pounding – but he needs to know.

"Tell me this isn't a dream," he whispers, and she smiles at him, shaking her head.

"Oh, Harry," she whispers back, and she takes another kiss from him.

When they pull apart, he holds her face in his hands, stroking her cheeks with his thumbs.

"Tell me," he repeats. "Because if this is a dream, I don't want to wake up."

She shakes her head again. "It's no dream, Harry," she whispers.

"But I thought you were… I dreamed you… it was…"

She eases his pain with another gentle kiss to the corner of his mouth. "Again?"

"I felt your blood on my hand," he breathes. "I felt it."

"It's a nightmare, Harry, nothing more."

"But I was so sure…"

"Harry," she whispers again, grabbing his hand and placing it boldly over her heart. "Feel. It's beating. And it's beating for you."

"But it was so… so real."

She takes a deep breath. "Harry, you've been having the same nightmare for weeks. Why do you keep imagining that I died?"

"I don't know," he says slowly. "I think it's just so hard to imagine you're really here with me."

"So don't imagine it," she says boldly. "Just realize. You stopped Elena, you stopped Ilya, you saved lives, and we retired. Harry, life doesn't always need to have a complicated ending. Sometimes the good guys win."

"But how could we have suffered through a decade of almosts and maybes and finally have a happy ending?" he asks softly. "How can that happen?"

"Because sometimes," she repeats, "the good guys win. And sometimes the story ends happily ever after."

"Does ours?" he whispers, and she smiles as she leans in for another kiss.

"You tell me, Mr. Pearce," she says.

And as she says his name with love on every letter, he remembers.

_Sasha comes toward them, and Harry tries to push Ruth behind him._

"_You killed her," Sasha says, and Harry tries to recover. Ruth's hands are warm on his waist, and all he can think of is how unfair life is if he gets this close to having a life with her, only to have a child ruin it._

"_No, Sasha," Ruth protests, but Harry continues to shield her._

"_Ruth," he says in a warning voice._

_And then Sasha charges. He prepares for the impact, can see the shard of mirror in the boy's hand._

_But then there's a gunshot and Sasha drops to the grass with a cry. Harry kicks the glass from his hand before reaching behind him for Ruth. She grasps his hand and presses her body against his. He feels her chest against his back, her warm breath on his neck, her free arm reaching around his body to press her hand to his chest. She's wrapped around him, and he knows she's searching for his heartbeat just as he's grabbing her wrist to make sure she's still here._

_They've come so far that it seems only right that Fate should try to give them a good kick in the pants just when they're close, but as his fingers clutch her pulse and he feels her heartbeat pounding through her veins, he takes a relieved breath. She's alive, she's alive in his arms, she's alive in his arms and she's all his._

"_Nice shot," he tells Dimitri, who jogs up to them, Calum and Erin close behind. Cal launches himself on Sasha and pins him with his knee. Erin stares at the Russian and tries to think of something to say._

"_You all right?" Dimitri says, and Harry nods. He feels Ruth's nod as she breathes softly in his ear, "Fine."_

_The younger officers exchange a look, then Calum pulls a grimacing Sasha to his feet. "Come on," he says, nudging the younger man and earning a groan. "Let's give them a moment."_

_Erin and Dimitri nod and follow Calum and Sasha back toward the bunker. Harry turns around and his hands drop to Ruth's waist._

"_You're all right?" he whispers, and she nods._

"_Are you?" she asks, and he nods back._

"_I thought… I was sure…"_

_She nods frantically and suddenly leans into his chest, taking a deep breath of him before she starts to sob._

"_Ruth?" he says, worried. "Oh, God, are you sure you're all right?"_

"_I thought we were going to die," she breathes. "We were so close, and I was sure we were going to die. That it was the universe's way of saying we were never meant to have those things."_

"_I thought so, too," he says. "But here we are."_

"_Yes," she says, looking up at him, her eyes sparkling with tears._

_And then, for the first time in years, he knows exactly what he's going to do with her. He leans down, brushes her nose with his, and, after just a second's hesitation, he kisses her._

"So?" Ruth asks, stroking his cheek and pressing her other hand against his chest. "Does our story have a happy ending?"

He takes a moment to memorize the way she looks right now, sitting in front of him in just his shirt, looking like she's been thoroughly loved, looking like she loves him with her whole heart.

"Yes," he says simply, and he pulls her in for another kiss.

And when he wakes up again hours later, her naked body draped over his, her hand resting over his heart, he kisses her hair and smiles as the sunlight creeps across their bed.

She starts to stir, and he watches as she wakes up. Her soft eyes open and she looks immediately for him, a smile spreading across her face as she meets his eyes.

For the first time in years, he doesn't want to dream. Everything he wants is right here in his arms.


End file.
